(no subject)
It all started a month ago when Mary Anne got the bright idea to clean up her room.
She threw out scraps of paper and a few suspiciously squishy MREs. She sorted ammo into caches and bagged some to bring back to the house. She made piles of laundry labeled "clean," "dirty" and "ready for burial." She cleaned her guns, checked the edges on her knives and was generally feeling pretty good until she started going through her dresser.
Staring up at her from the otherwise empty bottom drawer was a bag of cocaine.
Which got her thinking.
About just how long it’s been since she saw Ramon.
Or Random.
About what it means that Ramon’s willing to do cocaine in the middle of the bar.
About what could be in Switzerland.
About Ramon running around his world three sheets to the wind with no one keeping an eye out for him.
She slammed the drawer shut and started packing a bag.
She could try doing a reading for him--like the way she found Miho--but she doesn’t. She settles for guessing. It makes the process take longer, but she’s alright with that. A little voice in the back of her head tells her this is because she doesn’t really want to find him. She’s afraid of what she’ll see if she does.
She tells that voice to shut the fuck up after the first week and it hasn’t been back since.
Imagine you’re looking for your best friend’s name in the phone book. He’s pretty far from John Smith, but there are other people with his name. Logic says you just work your way through the list until you find your friend.
Now imagine that the phone book doesn’t just cover your city, but the entire planet Earth. And not just your Earth, but all the parallel Earths that are reasonably close to yours in terms of timelines.
Now add the fact that your friend’s number is likely to be very, very unlisted and you’ll have some idea of what Mary Anne is trying to do.
There are some worlds where no one has ever heard of a man named Ramon Salazar-not one like she means-and these get ruled out quickly.
There are others where Ramon Salazar is long dead-shootout with CTU agents, some say; blown up in a transaction gone bad, say others. These are also ruled out.
This still leaves her with more than enough worlds to stretch her legs over.
She could use the exercise.
If you total everything up, she crosses Europe roughly nine times.
She switches continents to visit Cali, Medellin, Bogota and Ciudad del Este; she gets to know these cities very well.
She gets shot on nine separate occasions and kills approximately a dozen men.
She does not find Ramon.
Thankfully, she's persistent.